Strands of Utopia
Subtitle: Spaces of Poetic Work in Twentieth Century France (Legenda Main Series)
Publisher: Legenda
Published: May 30, 2008
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 269
ISBN-13: 9781905981144
Subjects: Poetry & poets: from c 1900 -; European - French; Literary Criticism; Literature - Classics / Criticism; French
Description: "The poetic is an abiding yet elusive qualification within the discursive system of twentieth-century French literature. No longer amenable to formal assignment, its recurrences delimit a shifting, multi-layered practice of artistic and intellectual (self- ) invention. This study attempts to outline certain durable properties of that practice by confronting it with the complex theoretical and spatial metaphor of utopia. Drawing, in particular, upon the oeuvres of Victor Segalen (1878-1919), Rene Daumal (1908-44) and Yves Bonnefoy (b. 1923), it traces poetic work - work done in support of poetic difference - along the social, physical and textual axes of what is argued to be a sustained and radically inclusive Utopian practice within the literary field. This study encourages revised understandings of both the poetic and the utopian in the modern French literary context."--Jacket.